The big tell for those going in blind will be that the Underground Railroad in this story is an actual railroad that travels through a lengthy system of caves, rather than a metaphorical description of the series of safehouses and routes that escaped slaves would make use of to get out of the South. The story you see on this show, and in Whitehead’s novel, is a work of fiction. The Underground Railroad has been one of Amazon Prime Videos. Hidden and hunted, the escape of southern slaves to the North. You might be wondering whether “The Underground Railroad,” being set in the antebellum South, is based on a true story. An adaptation of Colson Whiteheads 2017 novel, the story follows an alternate history. By ones, twos, and threes, in the years before the Civil War thousands of enslaved people slipped through the night on their way to freedom, riding the Underground Railroad. It is, in every single episode, thoroughly devastating - but Cora keeps going through it all, because what else could she do? It tells the story of a young slave named Cora (Thuso Mbedu) who escapes a plantation in Georgia and makes a long, arduous journey across several states while being pursued by a dogged slave catcher named Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton). Jenkins directed all ten episodes of the series, and it shows - “The Underground Railroad” is a masterpiece. It’s only been four years since Barry Jenkins emphatically put his stamp on Hollywood with “Moonlight,” and now he’s putting his stamp on the world of television with the Amazon series “The Underground Railroad,” adapted from the Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead.

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